


31 Halloweentown Word Prompts

by H_K_Rissing



Category: Halloweentown (1998)
Genre: Halloween goodness, Halloweentown References, OSWC2020, October Spooky Writing Challenge 2020, Pagan influences, They're all gonna be about halloweentown tbh, fourth movie? I don't know her, my attempt at worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 15,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26766664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/H_K_Rissing/pseuds/H_K_Rissing
Summary: 31 Halloweentown word prompts from the October Spooky Writing Challenge.
Kudos: 4





	1. Tainted

Aggie smiled to herself and shook her head, smoothing the melted chocolate mixture over her tempering slab in her kitchen. She was in the midst of making a batch of her own candies to take to her grandchildren in the mortal world. Sophie was only a few months old, as chubby and round as a pumpkin, and little Dylan had only learned to read the year before. As Aggie sprinkled a palmful of spices over the invitingly fragrant chocolate in the shape of the Samhain sigil, she reflected that the candy was really for Marnie. 

Gwen of course wouldn’t eat it, remembering the more exotic ingredients that populated the shelves of her mother’s kitchen, and William would have a piece to be polite. Bright Marnie, crackling with life, would love the combination of cardamom and cayenne and cinnamon. Aggie folded the mixture back on itself, closing her eyes and focusing her intentions on her eldest granddaughter, who by rights of her bloodline and birth should have learned this simple kitchen witchery months ago. Once the chocolate had cooled and set enough to handle, Aggie set about pulling off pinches and rolling them into truffles. 

With each treat she formed, Aggie took deeper, slower breaths, reaching out to the power that was within and around her always. She poured into them her love for her family members, both the living and the dead, for Halloweentown, for this special night when the doorway was open. When Marnie ate them, she’d feel that warmth, and the power that had gone into creating the perfectly round, tempting morsels. Her grandmother’s love and blessing would stay on her, and she’d dream that night, under her purple blankets and canopy of stars, of flying over a vast smooth ocean, over the misty treetops of the whispering woods. 

Aggie straightened from where she’d bowed her head, waving her fingers to disperse the golden glow that wove between them. Gwen hadn’t practiced the craft in years, but even she’d be able to see if Aggie brought something so obviously bespelled with her, and would find some way of disposing of it before her children could lay hands on it. As it was, the spellwork was simple, muted, a winking eye. Imaginative, inquisitive child that Marnie was, it would call to her although she wouldn’t quite know why. 

And yet, as Aggie began to pack her bag, donning her pointy-toed boots and sweeping back her silvering hair, she reflected that Marnie’s receptiveness to such small and subtle cues as delicately enchanted chocolate would fade ever more as time went on. As Marnie’s ability to look for and enjoy the strange and unusual without question diminished, which it naturally would as she left behind her childhood, these small ways of affirming that she was right to feel as she did, that she was in fact different and special, would be lost on her. 

At least in this one case, Aggie supposed, Gwen would be right to view Halloween treats as suspect. She’d very seriously lectured her mother the year before on the horrors of tainted candy being given to children, which at the time had appalled Aggie- imagine having the ability to ensure that your children would never bite into an apple with a razor blade hidden below the candy coating and choosing to turn your back on it- but with what she’d heard on one of the radio broadcasts she listened to faithfully every week, Witch Fix, she doubted if that particular tale had ever been anything but just a story to keep Marnie from going out on All Hallow’s Eve. 

But even still, it was hardly as though Aggie meant any harm. In fact, this was for Marnie’s own good. It was clear to her that Marnie was not meant for the mortal world. What could it offer her that was meaningful and fulfilling? What could it do for her but grind her down until she too went about with dull eyes and tired bones? As Aggie placed the truffles inside a paper-lined box, she couldn’t help herself and embossed a quick glyph over the top. It glowed harvest moon gold for a moment before fading, and Aggie placed it on the very top of her bag with satisfaction. 

As she set out, the sun was still bright in the eastern sky, approaching its’ zenith. She’d spend as much time as she could in the mortal world with her living family, and then return to her home to commune with the other members of her family who had gone beyond a different door. She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the breeze that was merely chilly before the real cold of winter would set in, letting it blow off the dark thoughts which threatened the corners of her mind. She couldn’t, after all, bring tainted treats to her grandchildren.


	2. Silent

Working for her grandma had turned out to be an excellent idea. Though her courses at Halloweentown University this semester- Herbalism, Abjuration, Vampire Culture since 1800, Comparative Magic, and Occult Arts 2053- were more intense than the previous semester, being that Cromwell’s Fine Spells and Enchantments was a family business, it was easy to pick up hours at times that fit into her schedule. And besides, honing her craft under the watchful and loving eye of a magus was in and of itself as enriching and educational an opportunity as any college course offered on the subject. 

That was how Marnie came to be walking into a cemetery at sundown, bringing with her the bell, book, and candle along with the other supplies that she’d need for this specific spell. An elegant but harried werewolf had rushed into the shop that afternoon while Marnie had been mixing a tonic for another customer. Grandma Aggie, who’d been dusting and rearranging the amulets display in their window, greeted her warmly, as she inexplicably seemed to be on a first name basis with every single citizen of the town, a feat which never ceased to impress Marnie. It transpired that the spirit of her great-uncle had been disturbed, and she wished for him to be put back to rest before he withered her houseplants beyond repair and drank all her whiskey. 

“My dear granddaughter Marnie- you remember Marnie, of course?- will handle it this evening at sundown,” Aggie had assured her, before offering to throw in a charm to protect her houseplants from further depredation. After the werewolf had departed, promising to return to settle the other half of her bill upon the successful banishment of the ghost as was the practice at Cromwell’s, Grandma Aggie drew out her own book of spells to consult from. 

As she’d flipped through the pages, she’d explained to Marnie that it was their responsibility as magical adepts to help the others around them who couldn’t do spellwork. It was where some other witches and warlocks went wrong, viewing their powers as something which made them separate and better, instead of something that could allow them to be of service to their neighbors. Eventually, Grandma Aggie had found the spell she was looking for, and gave the book to Marnie to copy down into her own grimoire. So armed with the spell and her tools, Marnie continued to make her way amid the tombstones and crypts, looking for the name she’d been given. 

When she came to Joe Moonscar’s resting place, the north wind picked up and dug its teeth into her exposed hands and throat and face. Frowning at the billow of clouds gathering over the mountains in the distance- they might have snow later by the looks of it- Marnie gathered her unruly hair into a bun and sat cross-legged at the foot of the grave. She opened her book, weighing down the pages with the runestones she’d been looking for earlier in the week that had been hidden in the pockets of her cloak, and lit her candle with a quick cantrip. The flare and glow of orange magic settled back into a steady light, unaffected by the wind as Marnie had willed it to be. Finally she unsheathed the bell and rang it once, commandingly. The ghosts a few plots over who’d been minding their own business looked over at her with interest, and Marnie regretted not having thought to bring them an offering of some sort, in case they tried to interfere. 

“Joe Moonscar, son of Aberama, brother of Charlotte, uncle of Bobby, great uncle of Angelica, I call you forth,” She called with the loud, clear voice that she’d practiced, and felt her words reverberate across the distances in this world and the next. She opened one eye for a peek around, and spotting no obvious materializations, opened the other as well. She rang the bell again, repeating her invocation, and was this time rewarded with a sharp snap of cold, her breath pluming in front of her. Joe materialized noisily, accompanied by strains of music- Marnie couldn’t place it, but it was heavy with drums and trumpets. 

“No need to shout, witchling,” he chuckled, voice having the staticky, fuzzy quality of the restless dead. Already Marnie could see the malignancy growing at his core, the defining features of his snout and fur markings blurring. If left to roam freely much longer, he’d lose all of what had made him a person when he’d been alive and become a poltergeist. By that time, not even calling him by every specific name that could apply to him would be enough to recall him- the only way to be rid of him would be an exorcism. 

“Joe Moonscar, you must be tired. It’s time to rest,” She told him gently, unscrewing the lid to a bottle of whiskey. He whirled around her, drawn by the orange light of her candle in the blue gloom of the gathering dark and the scent of his favorite libation. 

“But it’s nice here. Full of warmth and good things,” he argued, ghostly fingers whispering through the bottle as he tried to take it from her hands. The music intensified, something in the rhythm familiar. 

“It’s cozy in your grave. And I’ll give you some good things to take back with you,” Marnie cajoled, pouring out a measure of the alcohol into a cup and placing it onto the plot of earth covering his remains. The glass tipped as he circled it, liquid soaking into the grass. He closed his eyes in apparent appreciation, music swelling even louder. The other ghost neighbors glanced over again, apparently disturbed by all the racket. Marnie laid out a plate next to the glass, placing on it some tea cakes and lemon pepper wings, dishes which had been his favorite in life that Marnie had stopped to pick up from a bodega on her way to the cemetery. 

“Joe Moonscar, you’re welcome to these offerings. But first, you must lay back down and rest,” she continued. He flitted back and forth, apparently torn. The music lost its rhythm, distorting like a warped record.   
“Once you lie down, I’ll pour out the rest of the bottle,” Marnie added, swirling its contents invitingly. At that, Joe ceased his movement and settled himself over his plot, his face and features coming back into focus as he sank down with a sigh of someone who hadn’t realized how tired he was until taking a load off. Once he was safely squared away, Marnie began the incantation to keep him there, tossing light handfuls of salt and rosemary over his bed. Once she was finished she dedicated the food and the drink to him and poured out the rest of the bottle as she’d promised, hoping he was comforted and warmed. 

The blowing of the north wind and the distant rustling of the leaves in the trees was the only sound as Marnie rang the bell once more, extinguished her candle, and closed her book. Proudly she noted that the cemetery was once more silent as the grave. She rose and dusted off the back of her cloak, hurrying back to the shop for the pot of hot tea she knew her grandma would have waiting and some more review for her Comparative Magic midterm.


	3. Fog

The time between Samhain and Yule was always marked by the dense, thick fog that would settle over everything until the sun was reborn from the longest night. After that there would be merry days of low temperatures and bright blue skies, with every so often a few inches of snow to turn the colorful town into a blank white canvas for an hour or two until everyone rushed out to clear paths or play. But the time Marnie was still used to thinking of as the month of November was always dreary, with drifts of brown leaves too sullen to crunch underfoot and a stubborn fog that settled over the town like a fat cat on a pillow and matched the low gray clouds. 

After the exertions of the Halloween celebrations, which began at the autumnal equinox and only reached their climax on Samhain, the inhospitable weather outside was almost a welcome reprieve. It was a chance to turn inward and be replenished, a chance to rest before the cycle began again, building back up to the fever pitch of Halloween. 

The final harvest had been taken in; the fields were stubbly and barren. The apples left on the trees were small and bitter, and the damp, shaded conditions fostered bumper crops of plants and herbs that needed to be picked, dried and preserved before the end of one season to prepare for the next. It was for that reason that Marnie and Sophie were hiking through the forest, searching for a specific stream on their grandmother’s vague directions. 

“Didn’t we already pass that tree?” Sophie asked, swinging her basket of vervain, mullein, and elderberry.   
“That one was a white oak, this one is a red oak… I think,” Marnie responded, peering up at what leaves were left on the branches high above them.   
“Well check the stars again. Are you sure Grandma said it was to the west?” Sophie insisted, crossing her arms over the front of her deep green cloak.   
“Of course I’m sure she said west,” Marnie responded huffily, placing her own basket of juniper, meadowsweet, and raspberry leaves amid the tangled roots of the tree in question to draw out the star map from one of the many capacious pockets of her own dark purple cloak. 

It was a glowing sphere which she held up to the sky and consulted. The map would point her in the direction of the star chart they’d input before heading out, back in their grandmother’s warm, cluttered parlor.   
“As I said, to the west,” Marnie concluded, just a touch smugly, tossing the ball to Sophie to check for herself. 

“If we do find the nightshade, I want to keep some of it for a flying ointment,” the younger witch mentioned, peering into the sphere.   
“If you’re doing a flying ointment, I think there’s some aconitum in the back of one of the cupboards at the shop,” Marnie added, nudging through the leaf litter to examine some mushrooms near her basket. Sophie agreed that she’d love some before tossing the sphere back and setting off in the direction the chart indicated. 

The wet black bark of the trees around them stood out in shocking relief against the thickness of the fog as they made their way further into the forest. Both sisters smiled into the gloomy surroundings, enjoying the cold tendrils of air wreathing their heads. They stopped several more times, once to collect wormwood, and once to take a few cuttings of milkweed, before arriving at the long promised stream.

As Grandma Aggie had promised, the bittersweet nightshade was growing and climbing near the stream amid trees and other shrubs, the dark jewels of the berries promising amid the foliage. Between the two sisters, they cut away enough strands to form several bundles that they bound together with white yarn. They shared a thermos of hot spiced tea Sophie brought by the light of the lantern Marnie conjured, pausing for a moment to delight in the babbling of the cold, rushing water. 

The trek back was easier, as the sisters had left periodic marks charting their trail that glowed with contained light, Marnie’s candlelight orange and Sophie’s flame red sigils guiding them home through the fog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually did research on where all these plants could be found and at what times of the year because I wanted to be ~aesthetic~ but not wildly off-base. Of course any horticultural inaccuracies (and vagueness surrounding navigating in a forest because I have zero knowledge on that subject too lol) are my own


	4. Apparition

The stars shone their crisp cool light down on the neighborhood as they wheeled overhead, and under the new moon the silence and shadows lay undisturbed outside the Cromwell house. On all sides their mortal neighbors slept on, unaware of the frisson of electricity in the air brought by the witching hour. 

All the windows of the house were dark, apart from one on the second floor in the back, in a room that didn’t appear in any of the other standard floor plans replicated faithfully in many other houses on the same street. The light was of a flickering quality, the kind that came from many candles, and was too diffuse to illuminate the darkened hedges and maintained grass of the backyard. Within, three witches talked in animated whispers. 

“Now you must keep in mind, whatever happens, we can’t awaken your mother,” Grandma Aggie whispered to her granddaughters as they took seats equidistant from each other at the round table in the center of Aggie’s room. Both young witches nodded, too excited to risk speaking and possibly wakening their mother, who would certainly put a stop to the proceedings. They’d both snuck from their rooms down the hall on slippered feet fifteen minutes before midnight to join their grandma and help her set up for the seancé they’d talked her into helping them hold. 

Now the circle of protection had been cast, and the elements invoked. The Cromwell witches joined hands in a small bedroom in a nondescript house in a suburb of a midwestern city and reached out to the spirits beyond. 

“I invoke, conjure, and command the spirit in this house to make their presence known to those here in this circle by knocking three times,” Marnie called, going for a tone of power and assertiveness without raising her voice and because she was only a teenager ending up sounding rather more like William Shatner. Grandma Aggie felt privately that Marnie and Sophie believed there was a ghost in the house because they’d spooked themselves after watching horror movies too late at night, but there was no harm in letting them get a little practice with their skills as mediums in a safe environment. 

“Spirit, if you can hear us, gather your strength and knock three times,” Sophie called when nothing happened but the crickets in the yard outside continuing to chirp.   
“Give us the sign of your presence by knocking three times,” Aggie continued after the silence had continued unbroken following Sophie’s call. 

All three of them jumped when three quick raps sounded on the wall.   
“Grandma, there’s really a ghost?!” Marnie asked, eyes glittering, elation crackling from her palm pressed against her relative’s.   
“Let’s ask again to make sure,” Aggie cautioned, surprised that not only was there a spirit that had somehow slipped her notice but that it was one willing to be called to their circle after such a short time of invitation. 

“Spirit, knock once more,” Aggie commanded, and sure enough the same three knocks sounded.   
“Ask if we can see it!” Sophie exclaimed, her own energy and excitement flooding the circle with a wash of power to double Marnie’s.   
“Let’s let Marnie do the honors. It is, after all, her seancé!” Aggie ruled, smiling at her oldest granddaughter as she eagerly called out the conjuration she’d memorized in preparation for the evening’s activities. 

It was at that moment that the door to Aggie’s room creaked open, at which Sophie gave a frightened squeak. Rather than the expected apparition, their very solidly flesh-and-blood brother Dylan poked his head around the door. 

“Can you guys keep it down? I’ve got a math test tomorrow.” He whispered, sounding peevish.   
“Not now, Dylan, a real ghost is about to appear to us!” Marnie’s enthusiasm to finally conjure her first spirit was such that she didn’t even sound annoyed at this interruption.   
“It knocked three times and everything when Grandma asked!” Sophie added helpfully.   
“That was me, dummy. Trying to ask you guys to put a lid on it.” Dylan rolled his eyes and withdrew from the room, off to dream about quadratic equations. 

Faced with both granddaughter’s obvious disappointment, Aggie walked them through the steps of closing the circle. Once they’d finished, as a consolation Aggie brought out her tarot deck and they each took turns doing readings for the others until the witching hour had passed and the candles had dimmed and Sophie’s head was drooping. Once they each returned to their beds, the silence of the neighborhood was complete and undisturbed once more.


	5. Forgotten

It was with her first breath of air on the other side of the portal that Gwen realized how much she’d forgotten. There was, simply put, nothing in the mortal world to match the scent of crunching leaves and caramel apples and sun-warmed cobblestones that was Halloweentown to Gwen. Stepping off the bus and looking around at the town square which was exactly as it had been the night she’d left almost two decades ago, all the memories that she’d buried came flooding back. 

The afternoons as a child, sitting in slats of sunshine on the hardwood floors of her mother’s shop, playing with her scrap of a black kitten named Belladonna. Lounging on purple velvet cushions in her father’s office at the university as he lectured his seminar classes on transmutation and illusion. The small red-painted primary school she attended once she was old enough, her childhood friends, a blurred impression of playing games at recess and passing notes throughout lessons. The open houses her parents hosted on every All Hallow’s Eve, house brimming over with friends and treats and light from a hundred carven jack-o-lanterns. Midnight broomstick rides with her mother, the whole of Halloweentown sprawling beneath them like a handful of loose jewels and the crescent moon riding high above them among the silvery clouds. Tea from her father’s favorite porcelain pot. The dark blue cloak that her mother had sewn for her by hand, with charms for good luck and protection worked into every seam, swishing above her boots. Her first kiss. The taste of chai ice cream from some little parlor on her first date. 

But above all, she remembered with a sudden and visceral rush, the feeling of doing magic, something she hadn’t done or had cause to think about doing in years. The snap of electricity, the ripple as the world remade itself according to her will. The sweet reverie of her idyllic childhood took on a decidedly more bitter tone as she recalled why she’d left in the first place. Her mother’s concern as she struggled to master each new level of spellwork. Her father’s gently probing questions as she drug her feet on committing to a specialized path of witchcraft. The whispers from other witches- jealous, no doubt, Gwen had thought at the time, that she had her pick of the warlocks and any other creature their age besides- about the stuck up Cromwell princess who thought she was so much better than them that she wouldn’t deign to take part in their silly casting of cantrips and donning of glamours. The higher expectations of every teacher, every professor, the close scrutiny of every one of her mother’s close personal and professional friends who had such high expectations for bright Gwen Cromwell, the cheery but invasive questions about when it would be her working behind the counter of her mother’s shop. 

Gwen drifted through the town square. She hadn’t practiced the craft in a while but even she could pick up on the nebulous, undirected aura of power that had surrounded her children, which she’d brooded over in silence for close to a decade and a half now. Even as she moved to follow them- they were nearby and so help her, when she found them she was dragging them all back to the mortal world, kicking and screaming if she had to- she paused as if frozen between the town hall and the great pumpkin on its plinth. Being back home- back here, it wasn’t home anymore, she had to remind herself for the first time in years- brought up the deep-rooted emotional responses from her young adulthood. The memory of being nothing but talented Aggie Cromwell’s talentless daughter brought a prickle of tears to the backs of her eyes. She remembered, like a punch to the gut, her fear of spending her life on the path charted for her, that everyone expected her to take, working in her mother’s shop and married to- who had her old steady date been when she left? Was it Kalabar or one of those DuBaers? 

The irony wasn’t lost on her as she spotted the two bright figures alighting from a broomstick, laughing and trailing magic and good fortune behind them like comets. As she had defied her mother’s plans for her by running away to another world, so now was she repaid by having her own children do the same to her. Of course, she reflected with cold fury mounting inside her, she’d made her choice with her eyes open, fully aware of the downsides and negatives that would come with leaving behind everything she’d been raised to in favor of a life as a blissfully, unremarkably normal woman. She would bet her eye teeth that her mother hadn’t explained yet to Marnie- and if she knew Marnie, she knew her eldest would already have it in her mind that she was staying- precisely why Gwen had chosen to leave all those years ago. 

She loved her life in the mortal world. Although it came with inconveniences, they were a small price to pay for knowing that everything she had was worth having because she’d worked for it. She knew that with the benefit of time her children would understand that. With these memories newly refreshed in her mind, and a sinking feeling in her stomach, Gwen squared her shoulders, reminded herself of her constant refrain- I’m doing this to protect my children- and marched across the square to reclaim them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon for Gwen leaving is that she was under a ton of pressure to be the best at everything as Aggie's daughter (like when Marnie and Aggie are getting the broom, the salesman asks if Marnie thinks she can handle it, and Aggie boasts that "This is a Cromwell", which didn't seem weird to me as a kid but kinda stood out to me on adult rewatches) and that's why she wanted to be "normal" above all else. It wasn't that she was necessarily as talentless as she perceived herself to be (the "I said powers, not flowers" mishap could be chalked up to simply being out of practice) but that in comparison to Aggie she felt she would never measure up. 
> 
> Also the name DuBaer is lifted from another iconic Disney Channel Original halloween movie, Twitches.


	6. Cauldron

“I’m just saying. It doesn’t matter if he’s a sweetheart when you’re together, if he’s not responding to any of your messages in a timely fashion, there’s something wrong there,” Ethan pronounced matter-of-factly, holding the door for Cassie and Marnie as they left their Conjuration 3350 lecture. 

“I know! I know! It’s just that he’s always so busy and I feel bad, like, am I being too demanding? But my feelings are important too and he knows I hate it when he ignores me because I’ve told him that specifically, and-” Marnie and Ethan both cut her off with loud exclamations mid-sentence.   
“You’ve hit the nail on the head. He knows you hate it when he ignores you but chooses to do it anyway. Dump him,” Ethan recommended as they wove between the crush of students rushing to or leaving class in Wollstonecraft Shelley Hall, the building on campus where most witch-related courses were taught. They weren’t restricted to just magic users- even practical courses like Conjuration 3350, which also included a lab component, could be audited by students without magical aptitude- and out of consideration for vampire, werewolf, and any other nocturnal students, many classes were held after sundown. The three friends emerged into the deepening twilight, full darkness held at bay by the antique gas lamps that ran on magic instead of fossil fuels. 

“Ugh, why did he have to ruin this? Everything was going so well!” Cassie exclaimed, settling into a sulk that Marnie, her roommate of the past two years, knew well might last all weekend. Marnie had never particularly liked Auden, Cassie’s shapeshifter boyfriend of around two months who could turn into a tiger, was very handsome, and as a result of those two facts acted generally like a smug jerk all the time. Torrance, her previous boyfriend, had been much nicer, blushing all the way to the tops of his pointed green gremlin ears every time they’d so much as held hands, but he’d had to move to the town by the sea for the spring semester because of an internship. The best that could be said of Auden, in Marnie’s book, was that he was at least better than Cassie’s ex, Arcturus, a fae who she’d been infatuated with throughout most of their freshman year who dated her for six months then broke up with her for being too “boring”. 

“I’m sorry this happened, but it’s absolutely his loss.” Marnie consoled her, sad to see that even the purple carnation pinned to Cassie’s lapel that reflected her moods was wilting.   
“And besides, I know what’ll cheer you up after giving him the boot- retail therapy,” Ethan chimed in, putting a hand on Cassie’s shoulder.   
“Well… I do need a new cauldron… “ she reasoned slowly, still seeming despondent.   
“And once you get one we can break it in by making your favorite witches brew before we go out tomorrow night,” Marnie added, glad to see the flower beginning to perk up once more. 

They made plans to meet back up with Ethan the next morning for the cauldron expedition and brunch, then Marnie and Cassie headed back to their dorm. Marnie had just finished changing into her pajamas when Cassie appeared at her door in a flurry of dark curls.   
“Will you stay here for a while? I’m going to meet with Auden in the courtyard and I’m just so nervous!” she exclaimed, pleating the front of her robe between her fingers.   
“Of course I will. I was just about to start on baking some ginger cakes,” Marnie assured her before pulling her into a hug. 

After Cassie left, Marnie consulted the handwritten recipe card from her mother for the ginger molasses cakes and got started on the assembly, worrying for her friend. She knew the other witch could be somewhat anxious surrounding interpersonal relationships, owing to a bad one she’d had in high school which had been the precipitating factor of her choosing to apply to be one of the exchange students who visited Marnie in the mortal world. While Cassie could be fierce when she had an academic theory or historical point to argue, at times her earnestness and compassion got in the way of standing up for herself. 

Before mixing the batter, she took in a deep breath, clearing her mind of worry and focusing on being proud of her friend for cutting off a guy who’d never treated her the way she deserved. She stirred counterclockwise and brought the mixture together, breathing out in one low, sustained hiss. When Cassie returned, the first batch was cooling from the oven, and a pot of her grandma’s calming tisane had just come to a boil. The witches sat on their couch and talked- “I told him I was done being ignored and he literally told me he didn’t care, so honestly I’m glad to be rid of him!”- and ate cakes and watched some silly drama about a girl choosing between her vampire and werewolf lovers. 

When they met up with Ethan the next morning, they went to one of the sorcery emporiums downtown. They browsed first through the reference books and the shoes while Ethan tried on hat after hat before declaring them all “not his style”, then helped Cassie pick out a new cauldron to replace the one that had been scorched to death by a mishap in her potions class.   
“You know, I think this was exactly what I needed!” She exclaimed as they left the shop, the yellow peony pinned to the strap of her bag in jaunty good health as they set out in search of a cafe with outdoor seating to take advantage of the sunny spring morning. The cauldron floated along behind them, held aloft by Cassie’s spells.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ethan's hat game is too powerful to go unmentioned.


	7. Fangs

Dylan managed to keep himself firmly rooted in the real world, and he was quite proud of that. His days were occupied with the rounds of advanced placement exams, academic bowl practices, and the ubiquitous piles of homework. Studying and preparing himself for college entrance exams was his main hobby, so that he could have some nice, safe career as a biologist or maybe a chemist. A normal job where he’d go to a desk, and do his work well, and be praised for it, then go home and get to relax in peace and quiet. 

Unlike, of course, what was happening today, which was Pete, Zach, and Chester- werewolf hair and zombie stitches and neon blue ogre skin in all their glory- getting deeply and loudly into a pro football game. Nancy and Jessica had been gabbing with Cassie over a witches glass to some other friends back in Halloweentown, and it had been as full of shrieks and cackles as apparently all teenage girl talk everywhere was. When Mom- chopping onions while arguing with Grandma while trying to convince Sophie to stop bugging Chester to let her play with his armadillo and do her book report- had desperately asked him to go and buy five more boxes of chickpea pasta, he’d been only too glad to grab his house key and get going. 

There was a grocery only a few blocks away, the sun would still be up for another hour or so, and the chilly fall wind was just right for a brisk walk. Even though he didn’t go wild about Halloween the way all his relations did, he had to admit there was something about seeing the long shadows over the leaf-littered lawns that made him smile. As he walked into the grocery, he almost did a double take. 

The first display he saw when walking in was a cornucopia of pumpkins and cinnamon brooms and those goofy decorative cornhusk dolls that everyone over the age of 50 seemed to be ready to pull out the second the temperature dipped below 70 degrees. Of course that was better than the usual array of sugary cereals or whatever other brightly packaged unhealthy garbage they were banking on kids to pester their parents for. But he stood corrected as he grabbed a basket and walked around to the other side, heading for the pasta aisle. There was all the candy and costumes and masks in an explosion that looked disturbingly like his living room on any given Saturday. But the thing that caught his eye was the little sets of plastic vampire fangs, hanging in a neat row on a display tree. 

All his focus on the rational, mundane, normal, safe world around him drifted out of focus as he suddenly remembered being 10 and drug all around Halloweentown searching for a vampire fang, which apparently not only existed but was something they needed for a magic potion. There were times when memories like this would blindside him. He went for months sometimes without thinking of the time he took a bus to another dimension and watched their mom’s old boyfriend shoot Marnie several times and then explode after Grandma shouted some Welsh at him. That other world seemed more like a fever dream now, since it had been years since he’d been there. 

But of course it had only been two years since Halloweentown had abruptly crossed over into his world and he’d gotten to witness firsthand the chaos of his classmates turning into literal as opposed to figurative monsters. He’d never understood until that dance how terrible, how wrong blood red eyes looked in a face you knew. There had been nothing of Cindy left, a girl who he was under no illusions had any great affection for him but who certainly wasn’t, at the very least, a murderer. And yet with terrifying grace she’d moved towards him, with fangs that just that evening in his living room had been the very same detachable plastic toy he was looking at now glistening with saliva in her mouth. The sudden sweep of horror at the sight of the razor sharp edges of her teeth had been buried by a just as sudden fascination, a desire to look into her dark eyes and let her come closer. The pull of Sophie’s hand had brought him away from that moment-long reverie, and it was the murmur of apology as an older lady maneuvered her cart past him that brought him out of it now. 

He shuddered once, a chill creeping down his back as he turned away from the Halloween display and hurried down the aisle to get what he’d come to the store for. Once he’d loaded up with the boxes of pasta, he hurried to check out, studiously not looking at the display. On the walk home he focused on reviewing his Lewis dot diagrams, and by the time he got back to the house, he felt much less unsettled. But even still, after dinner around the cozily crowded table, and washing up the dishes shoulder to shoulder with Natalie, after homework and a final study session before his test and a chapter of his book about the history of city planning, he felt that same shiver as he lay safe and warm in his bed. Simply for his peace of mind, Dylan got up to draw the curtains more securely over the window.


	8. Eerie

Marnie felt sure she was being watched. Perhaps it was a trick of her imagination, and perhaps it was just the fact that it was very late and her caffeine crash was upon her. Perhaps it was that the tables on the first floor of the library where she usually preferred to do her schoolwork had all been taken, so she had been working in a small study carrel on the third floor situated such that her back was facing the wide windows. 

She rose up out of her chair for the second time in as many minutes to peer around. Again, there was no one in sight, just the rows of bookshelves stretching on in undisturbed silence, every other sconce unlit and creating neat bands of shadow. By this point in the evening- well into the small hours of the morning, technically- she was sure there would be no one else left at the tables downstairs, and even if there was, surely a space had opened. She could benefit from being around other people, to help settle this sudden eerie feeling that despite the evidence of her senses, she was not alone. 

Marnie sat back and surveyed her paper, which had grown in relation to the stacks of books crowned with empty coffee cups around her. The paper was for her illusions class, and the professor was a notorious stickler who’d actually flunked her previous paper for insufficient sources. As failing the course was not an option- it was a prerequisite for the upper level Occult classes she wanted to take next semester- Marnie was making sure that this paper was aggressively and correctly cited. Academia had never been something she exactly excelled at in the mortal world, but thankfully APA citation was close enough to the style being required by Professor Eldridge that she’d been able to get the hang of it. It helped that the research was exciting and engaging, on a subject that Marnie actually was interested to learn more about, as opposed to some garbage paper on symbolism in 18th century literature, which was the last thing she’d had to turn in for her mortal high school education. 

There it was again, a feeling like fingers on the back of her neck. Marnie looked around sharply once more, even turning to check that the window was still showing nothing but the shadowy grounds, where she’d spent many happy afternoons studying or chatting with friends. She closed her eyes and cast out with her other senses. If there was another creature, even a ghost, nearby, she’d know.

_Unless, of course, it’s someone more skilled than me. Someone deliberately hiding themselves._

Marnie shook her head once, briskly, and set about gathering up the books she’d been referencing to be placed on the returns cart. The lights were out in all the other carrels she passed, and as she returned the books she looked cautiously down the aisle in both directions. Empty. 

Laughing a little at herself, Marnie went back to her desk to collect the rest of her belongings. Was that pen where she’d left it? Had she moved that cup or had it moved itself? In answer she swept the cups into the trash and stashed the pen in her bag along with the sheaf of papers she’d used for drafting and eventually for writing. Deciding that she was being ridiculous, she vowed not to have quite so much caffeine during study sessions for the next few weeks and headed for the stairwell. 

But back on the main floor, she found that area deserted as well. Maybe, she thought uneasily, she’d skip any more writing tonight, and head back to her room. The thought of setting herself back up at a table, the cavernous space empty of anyone but her and illuminated by just the light over her workspace, was unsettling. Placing her books and bag on the nearby table to sweep her cloak over her shoulders, Marnie continued to look around, certain that at any moment a librarian would emerge from a back room or a dim row between the towering bookshelves but suddenly not wanting to wait around to find out. 

The night air was cool and fresh on her face as she hurried a little towards her dorm. She whipped up a small ball of flames that hovered over her shoulder and crackled merrily as she walked, enjoying the stretch after sitting in one place for so long. Doing that little bit of magic, to chase away the shadows that surrounded her, was comforting in its own right, and the disquieting feeling that had been building for the last few hours began to dissipate. 

When Marnie made it back to her room, quietly letting herself in so as not to disturb Cassie, she fell into a deep and largely dreamless sleep. By the next day she’d forgotten that uncanny feeling, but even still she never studied on the third floor of the library after sundown again.


	9. Lurking

The golem, stock still and holding two pints of newly conjured ice cream, was still gazing at the unremarkable suburb around them with wonder, and Kal reflected that it really was for the best to wait for a while before putting his plan into motion. It would at least give his creation a little more time to start acting human before he was called upon to do so under close scrutiny. There was still an hour or so left before the Gray spell would really begin to spread in Halloweentown, or so his mother had assured him when he’d crossed over, so he had time to spare. 

He smiled contemptuously as he watched all the mortals running around decked out in their most disgusting costumes. They’d come to regret that soon enough. He focused on one boy, probably not old enough to write his own name, who was dressed up in the mortal caricature of a magician, with the pointed hat and long white beard. The kid was skipping along, plastic pumpkin full of treats swinging by his side as he held his father’s hand. If there was a comparison to be made between this child pretending to be a warlock who looked happy and carefree, and himself, an actual warlock who couldn’t recall having ever skipped while holding his father’s hand, he wasn’t interested in making it. 

Weak, his mother would have called him for thinking such things, as he directed his gaze once more to the unremarkable house on this unremarkable block, where streams of teenagers and children were coming and going. There was of course the hum of magic in the air, which was so typical of the Cromwells. After creating an entire world to shoehorn all the other creatures into under the guise of caring for everyone’s well being, to then swan around using magic in the mortal world from which they’d exiled everyone else. The hypocrites. And that was why self-pity wouldn’t serve him well, when anger was a better motivator and such rich food for it was so close to hand. 

There was a girl around his age arriving with her friends. Almost surely she’d also be going to the costume party at the high school that he’d scryed out months in advance. She was dressed as a vampire, and if Kal felt a quick pinch of discomfort, he wasn’t going to acknowledge it. This was a young girl who’d done nothing to him, and yet because of him would become something new and bloodthirsty. Having no coven to show her how to control her thirst or to care for her the way real vampires did, she would likely end the night as a murderer. 

_This is about the Cromwells. Any deaths are on their heads. If they hadn’t killed his father, he wouldn’t have been brought to this. And was the girl not getting what she deserved, to become the creature she’s mocking?_

Kal allowed his second sight to rove over the house, to check that all was as he’d intended before proceeding. There was Gwen, a name he’d never heard pronounced without a sneer, preparing another batch of cupcakes. There was the brother, in his room by himself, his dimly lit outline flaring every once in a while as he paced back and forth to the door and away from it again. And there was Marnie, the witch who burned a brilliant orange in his second sight and left afterimages as he moved his eyes, the one he’d scryed from afar and identified as a way in to get the spellbook, the one he’d fallen asleep thinking about, wondering about, in her room talking with friends on the computer. The thought of speaking to her- finally, after so long planning- brought his heart leaping into his throat. The plan was still to flirt with her, as it was the safest way to pressure her into showing him the book while also ensuring she wouldn’t want to bring him up to the others until the last possible moment. His mother had specifically forbidden it, but of late Kal had been wondering if he might not ask her to come away with him anyway. If there was one thing he’d gathered about her in the lonely midnights spent scrying, it was that she was kind. 

_And powerful. Most importantly, powerful. With her by his side, he wouldn’t have to stay in the mouldering mansion where his father had hidden them away as it fell even further into disrepair. With her help, he could go anywhere, do anything he liked. His mother couldn’t possibly stop the two of them._

Moving on again from that ping of dissonance, he continued to search out the house, finding Agatha and the other child. He thought his surveilling had slipped past unnoticed, but he felt himself catch, just lightly, on the youngest witch. He saw the moment she went to attention, saw the tentative feelers of her own second sight pushing outward and evaded them easily, glad that he’d thought to conceal himself and his creation as Agatha’s much more encompassing push outward for intruders came. 

It was unlucky that she’d sensed him, but he was secure in his cloaking spell. It had, after all, come from Agatha’s own grimoire, the one acquired by his father decades ago. Like a virus, any sensors or spells they’d placed on their house for protection- if they’d placed any, which he was betting they hadn’t, being arrogant and overconfident as Cromwells always were- would perceive that this was more of Agatha’s magic, and he would raise no alarms. Still, he’d do well to avoid them both, and deal only with Gwen, who was out of practice, and Marnie, who would be distracted by other considerations. 

He smirked as he motioned sharply to the golem that they were going. They approached the house and were admitted with no problems, just two more here to enjoy the pleasant chaos of a Halloween party.


	10. Masquerade

It wasn’t that Ethan was homesick, it was just that it was easier to let everyone think that. At their high school back home, he’d run in different circles from all the other “exchange students” who had come to the mortal world, with the only overlaps being Cassie, from their applied magic electives, and Natalie, from the brief two weeks they’d been a part of the same drama club before his father found out and forced him to quit. So it wasn’t so much of a stretch to allow them to think that he was withdrawn and quiet because he missed his other friends, his other classes. 

He certainly didn’t miss being home. His parents- his perpetually angry, condescending father, his mother who’d been gaslit into a doormat- did a good job of hiding their dysfunction from the rest of the Council, and the town at large. But Ethan, of course, the recipient of all his father’s prying, controlling conversations, his “training” that focused only on how to use magic to trick and to take, was well acquainted with the truth. That was why it hadn’t exactly surprised him when his father had told him of how the young Cromwell witch had fallen so neatly into the trap he’d prepared, as she’d made an impassioned but impetuous defense of her idea. And that Ethan himself was to be one of the few children selected to venture across through this new portal created by the Cromwells, and to serve as his father’s eyes and ears and, when needed, his catspaw. 

Really, Ethan understood why Marnie felt the way she did, and why this idea seemed like a good one to her. The citizens of Halloweentown wouldn’t have felt so strongly that a retreat from the human world was necessary, that closing the portal permanently might be for the best, if it hadn’t been for the Gray spell. Ethan himself remembered the feeling of his thoughts, his powers, draining away as he looked down at his graying arms with a detached interest. He hadn’t been able to exactly recall where he’d gone or what he’d said or done while under the spell, and every time he tried to reflect more clearly on the fugue he was left with a feeling of agitation and a bad taste in his mouth. He could see why Marnie felt it was imperative to show as many creatures as she could that not all humans were boring husks, as the creatures had felt for themselves and had had no frame of reference for questioning whether that was an accurate representation of mortals, or members of angry mobs, as they featured so often in morality tales and spooky stories. 

That was why Ethan was so withdrawn, and why he spent so much time in his room away from the other creatures. The disconnect between realizing forcefully that his father was wrong- undeniably yet inconceivably- and that he, Ethan, was still going to carry out his commands to ensure Marnie’s plan failed made him uncomfortable to say the least around the others. That, and of course his father was still expecting daily reports. Ethan was aware that the others found it touching that he had a father who was so dotingly devoted to his well being that he called every day. And dutiful son that he was, he did nothing to disabuse them of that notion, aware as always that his father’s much-vaunted image was at stake if he did. 

It was easier at “school” to forget why he was there. For one thing, the humans around him were friendly and welcoming and so delightfully undemanding. And of course, there was no omnipresent fear, the way there was once he got back to the Cromwell home each day, that his father would call him at any time and he’d have to drop whatever he was doing- whether it was helping Mrs. Piper to prepare dinner, or spending time taking in “mortal culture” through television shows with Sophie, or debating homework answers with Pete and the guys- to chat. And for another, the content he was learning was actually quite interesting. But it wasn’t enough to stop his stomach from dropping each time Marnie cheerfully waved to him in the halls. _I’m planning to betray you. Soon something you love will be taken from you and I’ll be responsible for bringing it about._

His face burned with shame when they talked as a group about one of their own being missing, about sending everyone home early. He had uniquely and intimately understood the short story they’d read in literature class earlier in the week about a man driven mad by an imagined heartbeat being prompted to confess to murder. He knew it was melodramatic, and impossible to boot, but he fancied he could almost hear Cassie crying out from the witch’s glass stashed in his dresser upstairs. He wondered that the others didn’t smell his guilt on the air. 

He kept up the masquerade- _I’m trustworthy, I’m one of you_ \- throughout the Halloween carnival. Standing before the Cromwells, and the creatures that he’d come to think of as his friends, seeing the shock and confusion on their faces as his father outlined the role he’d played in this little drama, was the most ashamed of himself he had ever been. More than planting the dagger, worse than waiting in the suit of armor to catch Cassie alone and, cowardly, quietly, sneak up behind her while her back was turned. It was then that he realized, with the sudden clarity of a revelation long since coming, that a future without knowing he’d at least tried- too little and too late, but an attempt nonetheless- to demonstrate some kind of morals was unacceptable to him. 

So for the first time in his life, he stood his ground against his father and refused to go back to Halloweentown. He didn’t know what his future was going to be like here in the mortal world, didn’t even know if the Cromwells would have him, in light of evidence of his treachery, but whatever came, at least there was a world between himself and his father.


	11. Wicked

Marnie had always loved seeing the first Halloween decorations come out in stores. All summer, while her friends laid by the pool to soak up the long, hot days, she waited and listened to her CD of Celtic folksongs turned up much too loud, which always started a spat with Dylan. Once August came, and her friends bemoaned the returning of school and the lengthening of the nights, she anticipated with baited breath the first fallen leaf and took advantage of the weekends to marathon old horror movies with Sophie way past her bedtime. So she was always thrilled to see pumpkins in the grocery for the first time, flanked by pots of marigolds and mums. 

She could remember being much younger and capering excitedly in front of the small aisle of feathered masks and candy-corn striped mugs, begging her mother to be allowed to spend just five minutes browsing it on every trip they took. And one year, with Dylan sitting solemn and squishy in a papoose around her neck and tired from a long day at work, her mother had relented and allowed it. 

Marnie had taken her time, admiring the plastic skeletons and pouches of fake bugs, sighing with admiration over the tablecloth patterned like a ouija board (though she hadn’t known that was what it was called at the time) and running her fingers ever so gently over the light-up haunted house on display outside of its box. There had of course been the sacks of candy, a few kids costumes, and then there had been other fall-related foods and beverages. 

One in particular had stood out to Marnie as a child. It was a cardboard sixpack labeled Wicked in curling, bold purple script on a midnight blue background. There was a witch on a broom, suspended in front of a yellow full moon, which had sealed the deal, and Marnie had seized it with both her small hands to bring it to her mother and beg to be allowed to buy it. For once her mother had simply laughed instead of scolding her, explaining that the beverage contained in the dark brown glass bottles was alcohol, which she as a child was not only not allowed to drink but would also think tasted gross. Marnie had put it back, satisfied with that explanation, but every year afterwards when the Wicked hard ciders appeared in the grocery store along with the pumpkins and masks and mums, she’d spend just a second longer admiring the packaging, which never changed, and promising herself that once she was old enough, she’d buy herself one to see what it tasted like. 

She hadn’t forgotten when she went back to visit her mother and brother in the mortal world on Halloween night. She, Dylan and Sophie had gone to the store to buy ingredients for dinner so that they could cook for their mother, all the rough edges that had been the source of so many arguments as children smoothed away by a year apart. They’d gotten the ingredients for their mother’s favorite meal- breakfast for dinner- and on a whim as they were passing that same small seasonal aisle turned out in its Halloween finery, Marnie had picked up a carton. 

The three siblings got started on the cooking, bickering without any real heat, and, once Gwen got home- surprised and pleased to find both daughters waiting for her, and then touched to see the table set and the preparations for a meal she didn’t have to cook underway- catching up on all the news they’d missed. After they’d eaten the French toast and soft scrambled eggs and cleaned up after themselves, after they’d piled together on the couch to watch a movie the way they had on Halloween nights when their dad had still been alive, it was drawing on midnight in the mortal world and it was time for the witches to leave. After assurances that they were keeping up with their schooling, and not giving their grandma any trouble, and that they’d call via witch’s glass as usual on Wednesday night, they summoned the portal and took their leave. 

Sophie had her own friends, the creatures she went to high school with, and it was still barely noon in Halloweentown, so the two went their separate ways. Marnie stopped by their grandma’s, to help with the preparations for the open house she threw every year and to pass on love from their mother and brother. After painstakingly arranging and rearranging the tablescape, and running a few batches of cookies through the oven as her grandma set up the groupings of candles and tarot decks in the living room, Marnie headed back to campus to get ready for her own evening plans. 

She and Cassie and their friends Evanora, Rachelle, and Manon got ready together, snitching from the piles of treats the Cromwells had baked the night before and drinking the witches brew that was an old family recipe of Cassie’s. With their costumes on and their makeup in place, they set off, with plans to attend several of the different parties happening both on campus and in the town proper. The sorcery department was giving a reception in one of the conjuring labs, which had been bespelled to look like an underwater cavern. Eleanor Bone, the head of the herbalism program, was hosting a party in the greenhouse along with several of the fae students. Manon’s friend Anna, who lived in Lovecraft Hall, was also having an open house of sorts, and that was where the night really got started. Even had the witch’s brew not been flowing, the magic in the air was intoxicating enough. 

Manon stayed at Anna’s, as both girls were vampires and would be going to a masquerade at the Sackville-Bagg’s mansion later in the evening, and Rachelle also split off to join the shapeshifters who would be going for a midnight run in the forest. Marnie, Cassie, and Evanora stopped first at Monk’s, a pub that begrudgingly became a coffeeshop during the day, still tended by the same surly goblins, and from there to a club that spanned all three floors of a converted tenement building. There they danced, awash with glamour, magic sparking off their skin. 

The plan had been to end the night at Ethan’s, who lived in the townhouse that the Dalloways had owned since very near the beginning of Halloweentown. After his father’s arrest, he’d had the place to himself and had over the years redecorated more to his tastes. The witches had enjoyed gatherings from sabbats to movie nights there, and when they arrived found several of their other friends and acquaintances from classes already present. Marnie summoned the treats they’d baked in addition to the pack of ciders, the Wicked label still as enticing as it always had been. She had her first sip sitting on the roof admiring the scatter of stars and the hazy full moon, leaning comfortably against Kal. 

It was delicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sackville-Baggs are the vampire family from the other excellent Halloween movie The Little Vampire.


	12. Prank

It was traditional at the high school in Halloweentown for the members of the senior class to play various pranks at the end of the year. As Beltane drew nearer, Sophie had asked for Marnie’s help with plotting out the stunt with which she and her friends were hoping to surprise their schoolmates. 

Now all of the final details had been attended to, and as the sun was going down Sophie and her friends Doreen, Alastair, and Vlad took their places. As the tallest, Alastair would be the one actually riding what would appear to be a horse to the other students and faculty assembled at the rugby pitch for the match of the week. Sophie, with some pointers from her sister and grandmother, had enchanted her old broomstick to look like a large midnight black stallion, with flaring nostrils and hooves that scattered sparks as they struck the ground. Vlad had provided the costume- a black riding habit that had been his grandfather’s- and Doreen had provided the pumpkin, upon which the teenagers had lovingly carved a ghastly grinning face. Alastair would ride the “horse” at full gallop pursuing Vlad, and when Doreen would appear to ward him off with a talisman, he would lob the pumpkin, crackling with hellfire, at the pair. Sophie was waiting and watching in the woods that surrounded the field, concealed by the trees. She was responsible for not only maintaining the illusion that the broom was really a horse, but also the illusions that Alastair’s head was gone and that the pumpkin was on fire. 

Sophie had wanted to adapt a mortal tale of some sort for their prank, but it had been Marnie who’d suggested the legend of the Headless Horseman. The group had been enthusiastic about it from the start, immediately beginning to brainstorm how best to ensure that the prank was harmless. The pranks were overall silly, more of an opportunity for seniors to showcase their skills than anything serious, but at the start of the year they’d been cautioned that all it took was one person causing irreparable damage to students or property to have the tradition suspended indefinitely. Everyone watching would know immediately that no one was in danger, but the skill would come in making it look convincing regardless. 

The spring evening was a warm lavender as the wind blew and the crickets sang, and most of the student body and faculty were gathered in the stands to watch the weekly game. Marnie and Sophie were watching eagerly for Doreen’s signal, as the intention was to proceed at halftime. Marnie was confident that her younger sister would handle all the different moving parts of the spellwork with no trouble. She was only there as insurance for if something went terribly wrong, which it hadn’t in any of their trial runs. 

As predicted, the crowd gasped and screamed and then applauded as they recognized what was going on. Alastair played his part well, rearing the broomstick up so the horse appeared to kick at the air with its forelegs, and the other two were suitably panic-stricken at being pursued by a headless man. After they’d done their bit, Sophie murmured the incantation for invisibility and flung it out over her friends, giving the appearance that they were there one moment juggling a blazing pumpkin with a lunatic grin and then gone the next. 

All four cackled with laughter when they reunited in the forest, Alastair divesting himself of the heavy garments and Doreen and Sophie tossing the still burning pumpkin back and forth between them a few times. Marnie congratulated them on a job well done and took them out to the Abominable Snowman for a treat to celebrate, enjoying their speculations over what would be said about their prank the next week, what group might try to pull one off next and how they’d try to top the night’s performance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The movie Sleepy Hollow is absolute peak fall aesthetic


	13. Grimoire

“Look Soph, I promise it’s in there. Did you check with the abjurations?” Marnie called to the front of the store, where her younger sister was frantically riffling through the pages of a large book bound in wine-purple cloth.   
“There’s not exactly an index!” Sophie shot back, sounded harried, which was fair. There was, after all, a line of people that kept getting longer, waiting to be seen. And the person at the front of the line was struggling to keep what sounded like a tempest contained in a very old and very ugly teapot. Fierce winds kept whipping through the store, flinging pouches of herbs and sachets of tea off the shelves and tearing at the clothes of the other patrons, and loud, ominous rolls of thunder kept sounding. Marnie was trying to advise Sophie on where in her grimoire a containment spell might be found, while also herself tending to a finicky potion that required constant stirring and the addition of at least thirty ingredients at the precise stages. 

As the potion belched out a third acrid puff of green smoke, Marnie strongly considered just ditching it and going to help in the front. Grandma had entrusted the store to her while she took a well-deserved holiday to the sea, and Marnie had absolutely no intention of her grandmother returning from her vacation to discover they’d lost customers. But the potion was settling down now to a low simmer, colors shifting rapidly as Marnie threw in the last pre-portioned ingredients as fast as she could move the small silver dish. 

“Marnie!” Sophie called, the tempest winds continuing to flip the pages of the spellbook every time she thought she was narrowing down on the right incantation. The older witch hurried to decant the brew into a vial, and not having time to melt the purple wax with which she usually capped all her potions, jammed a cork down the neck, coated it with the white wax she’d already had melted for use in the potion itself, and stamped it with the Cromwell coat of arms. 

“Here you go, here you go,” she stammered, tossing the still very hot potion gingerly from hand to hand as she emerged through the burgundy drapes that covered the door to the back and conveyed it to the goblin for whom it had been mixed. He tossed a few coins behind the counter, ducking as crystals in a v formation hurtled through the air where his head had been only moments before. Their patron staggered out of the shop as another customer staggered in, bracing himself against the wind that whipped at his black leather jacket. 

Marnie, who was herself struggling to make her way nearer to Sophie, who was clinging to the grimoire, didn’t notice the newcomer enter, and didn’t see as he fought to raise his arms and call out a spell, the words snatched away from his mouth as he said them. But immediately she felt the effect as the wind slowed drastically to a slight breeze. All the patrons moved as if underwater, their hair and clothes still billowing but in slow motion.   
“Hey, what’s up?” Kal asked, unaffected by the spell and moving towards the counter. Marnie, also unaffected by his spells as always, rose from her crouch and tossed the strands of her long hair out of her face. 

“Just a busy afternoon,” she responded, waving a hand to free Sophie as well. The younger witch was only too glad to hand over the book in favor of braiding back the cloud of staticky brown hair that had been covering her face. Marnie quickly thumbed through her spellbook and found the page she’d been looking for with the specific enchantment for containment. She focused and spoke the words aloud as the paged continued to shiver and turn themselves in the slowed but still forceful wind. 

Suddenly the wind and thunder stopped, and the customer who’d brought in the cursed teapot slumped to the ground, exhausted from the effort of holding it shut. Kal, having also lifted his spell, caught the witch before her head could hit the floor. The offending item was sealed further as Marnie embossed a glyph over the lid to keep the containment powered in perpetuity, and Sophie fetched the smelling salts. The other customers murmured approvingly as they adjusted their own hair and set about collecting the effects and parcels which had been ripped from their hands from the mess on the shop floor. 

The Cromwells continued to help their clients and Kal set about straightening the shop as best he could, placing bags and boxes back on the shelves and gently motioning shards of broken glass out of the faded plum carpet and back into the bottles they’d originally formed.   
“Thanks for your help,” Marnie called once the last customer had been sent away with her usual monthly dose of calming tea, sweeping the mess of mixed powders on the counter into her hand.   
“Hey, any time,” Kal responded, turning away from the amulets he’d been carefully hanging back on their display to smile at her. 

“Did you know your eyelashes are green?” Sophie asked sweetly, displaying the uncanny second sense possessed by all younger siblings to interrupt any imminent flirtations. Marnie tried not to squawk as she scrubbed her fingers over her eyes and they came away smeared with soot from the potion. Once she’d blinked away the remaining particulate, she noticed that the scraps of paper with extra details for spells, the pressed flowers and herbs, the reports she’d turned in to fulfill the requirements of all her practical magic courses which ordinarily were tucked neatly between the pages of her book were hanging out of it at odd angles, some strewn around it on the side countertop. 

Trying not to curse, Marnie grabbed her grimoire, going back through page by page to place the extra items back where they belonged. She couldn’t help but smile as she did so. Her grandma had given her this book as a gift on her eighteenth birthday, back when it had only been twenty pages long or so. They’d passed a pleasant afternoon sitting in the overstuffed armchairs of her grandmother’s living room copying certain spells from Aggie’s own book that all the Cromwells had known, or ones that Aggie found particularly helpful for running the shop. All those spells were at the very beginning, in clumsy, eager handwriting. She’d used this book for notes for all of her courses since her first semester at Halloweentown university, and flipping through it was like going back in time. It was as though younger versions of herself were also pressed between the pages. Each course she’d taken had its own section, and she so clearly remembered moments from each one. New pages appeared as she willed them, so she would never run out. Eventually, her book would be as long and all-encompassing as her grandmother’s. 

Kal handed her a scrap of blood red ribbon that had fallen on the other side of the desk from the divination class they’d taken together. She took it, careful not to touch his fingers, and nestled it within the right chapter.   
“So what’s up?” Sophie asked Kal, the shop mostly restored to rights.   
“Not much, just wanted to stop by, see if Marnie had some time to run over a few runic formulas with me, but it looks like you’ve got your hands full,” he responded, smiling again as he caught Marnie’s eye.   
“I can watch the shop for a while, if you want?” Sophie offered Marnie.   
“Oh no, Soph, really it’s ok, that’s nice of you but-”  
“Go. I’ve got some notes to make in my own grimoire, and I’ll need peace and quiet,” Sophie insisted firmly, smiling at the blush on her sister’s face. 

After collecting her cloak and bag and book, Marnie let her sister know she’d be back before sunset, and she and Kal headed off, her hand in the crook of his elbow and the cool autumnal wind sending leaves swirling around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I ship Marnie x Kal, the fact that Kimberly J. Brown and Daniel Kountz are dating irl gives me life


	14. Specter

Kal and Marnie stood hand in hand and looked up at the old manor house where he’d grown up. Never in his memory particularly well cared for, it had fallen into worse disrepair since he’d left. He’d become aware of his mother’s passing that morning at 3am, sitting suddenly bolt upright in bed and jarring Marnie awake as well. Still sleepy, she’d reached out to run a hand over his back, mumbling a little as she asked what was wrong. 

“It’s my mother. I think… she’s gone,” He’d responded, rubbing his forehead, and at that Marnie sat up too, wide awake.   
“What? How can you know?” she’d asked, straining her ears for the wail of a banshee.   
“I was having a dream, only it was a vision. She… used her last breath to curse both of us along with the rest of your family.”  
Marnie had leaned back against the pillows in shock. From what Kal had told her and she’d inferred over the years, once he’d gotten to be old enough to question his mother’s plans- primarily the ruination of the Cromwells and the resurrection of his father- their relationship had soured. As time went on, especially after he’d failed their plan with the stealing of the spellbooks and the ensorcelling of both worlds, she’d become increasingly distant and focused more on bringing his father back from the dead. As she went down darker paths, Kal had known that this couldn’t be a way forward for him. He’d packed his belongings and on the night of a new moon had left the manor where he’d grown up and hidden for most of his life, knowing that he wouldn’t be returning. Knowing that he’d likely face legal action for his crimes. Knowing that without him to care for her after the deals with demons and selling of her blood and bones and bouts of intense spellcasting, his mother would likely die. 

He’d gone directly to the Halloweentown Council, to explain his situation and throw himself on their mercy. He’d admitted his part in the crimes undertaken against the citizens of Halloweentown- which he’d realized some time ago was a ploy on his mother’s part to ensure he would never be able to turn on her without facing punishment himself- and agreed he wouldn’t fight any consequences they deemed fitting. Faced with his obvious sincerity, and in light of the fact that at the time of his misdeeds he’d been a minor led badly astray by people who should have cared for him, they’d decreed a formal public apology to the citizens in general and to Agatha Cromwell in specific, followed by several years of community service was reparation enough. 

That was how Marnie had come to re-meet him- as part of his service he assisted in tutoring young witches and warlocks whose parents lacked the time or the skills to do so themselves. Marnie had sought out volunteering opportunities while she worked her way through the basic courses of her degree, knowing that once she had enough experience under her belt her grandmother would hire her to work at the shop. Still a little wary of her own magic- she had, after all, never had formal training apart from the somewhat piecemeal education from her grandmother and mother- she’d figured showing children the basics would be a good place to start, and thus their paths had crossed again. It had taken a while for him to convince her that he had no ulterior motives or bad intentions, but eventually a friendship had formed between them, and once his years of service were over he’d also enrolled in Halloweentown University. His education as a young adult had been much more systematic than Marnie’s, but this was also his first time learning magic with others in a traditional academic setting, and they’d come to enjoy studying together more and more. 

They’d graduated a year apart- it would’ve been two had Kal not been able to test out of some of the core classes- and it was in that time that they began officially dating. Marnie had been working full time for her grandma for the two intervening years since, and Kal was clerking for one of the Council members while still finding time to volunteer tutoring witches and warlocks. It was only recently that they’d begun spending nights together, but it was a development Marnie had relished. She always seemed to fall asleep faster and more deeply when her head was pillowed on his shoulder. 

They were in Marnie’s flat above the shop, which Agatha had used originally as storage and had been glad to let her move into provided she cleared out, catalogued, and re-stored all the inventory. Marnie slid from the bed and went to get her witch’s glass, the salt, and some white candles. A curse on a witch’s last breath was nothing to trifle with, and she’d need her grandma and sister’s help to fully remove it from their family. After waking both other witches and explaining the situation, they each set about doing their own cleansing rituals, which would serve as a stopgap until they could all meet to take definitive action. 

After the cleansing spell, neither Kal nor Marnie could fall back asleep and laid side by side under Marnie’s painstakingly embroidered purple duvet that had been a Christmas gift from Sophie. Eventually Kal turned to face her.   
“I’m not going to be able to rest until I go see.”  
Marnie placed her hand on the side of his face and pressed her forehead to his. “Then let’s get ready to go,”

That was how they came to be standing shoulder to shoulder in the predawn darkness, looking up at the once-grand house. With a deep breath and a squeeze to their joined hands, Kal gestured, murmured the spell, and the front door creaked open, the lights in the foyer flickering on slowly. As they entered, the lights in the other rooms began to flicker on as well. Dust laid thick and undisturbed on most surfaces, obscuring the patterns of the rugs on the floor, apart from a few tracks that looked suspiciously like something big had been drug through the room. 

“If it really was a vision, her…. She’ll be in the conservatory,” Kal breathed, breath fanning in front of him on the cold, still air. He led the way, remembering the hallways and doors of his childhood home much better than he’d thought he might. Marnie thought that under the pall of darkness and disrepair that currently shrouded it, this might be a beautiful place. She could almost picture it in years gone by, or perhaps years to come, light streaming from the windows, the stained furniture and tattered hangings replaced, friends in every room. Shaking her head slightly, Marnie left her reverie and held tighter to Kal’s arm. Even if that had been a premonition of the future, it would by necessity be a long ways away. While the specter of his mother- and his father too, for all she knew- hung over this place, she could hardly imagine Kal wanting to spend any amount of time here. 

The conservatory was cavernous and shadowy, even with the first rosy fingers of dawn lightening the sky. She was crumpled on the conservatory floor, and Marnie had at first mistaken her for a bunched rug or fallen hanging. Kal was drawn up short, taking in the gaunt wasted face that was still as bitter in death as it had been in the last moments of her life, the sharply protruding bones, the dark puddle of blood beneath her shorn head. Although they’d been by no stretch of the imagination close for most of his life, it was still the woman who’d cleaned his scraped knees and taught him the rules of magic and provided whatever modicum of tenderness he’d known as a child. Marnie couldn’t imagine finding her own mother’s body in such a way, and tears sprung to her eyes as Kal turned away and she pulled him into a hug. 

They laid her body to rest in the small family graveyard, under the elaborate commemorative headstone she’d conjured to honor Kalabar during better days. Kal assured Marnie that she would’ve wanted that. With that first and hardest task behind them, they stood under the warming sunshine of an autumn morning and contemplated the house before them.   
“If you want to leave, we can,” Marnie offered, her hand still joined in his.   
He was silent for a moment before responding, “Let’s go meet up with your grandma and sister and lift the curse.” Nodding, Marnie started back to where they’d left their brooms, but Kal, unmoving, halted her. 

“If I want to come back, will you come with me?” He asked quietly once she’d turned to face him questioningly. Marnie solemnly put her other hand on his shoulder.   
“Of course I will,” she whispered, and as he wrapped his arms around her and rested his head on top of hers, Marnie let a little pulse of magic pass from her beating heart to his. Not to dispel his grief or anger or any of the other emotions he was rightly feeling, but just to remind him that he wasn’t alone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written partially while listening to the songs Dark Doo Wop by MS MR and Witchcraft by Vian Isak and Juniper Vale


	15. Trap

Luke drifted, unaware. He had a vague sense that he’d started the day as usual, eating breakfast with his mom before she went to her job. It was only as the day had gone on that a fog had begun to drift gently through his mind, and he’d noticed the dulling of his colorful clothes and the goblin features he’d learned to embrace and even become proud of. With a hazy sense that something was out of place, he walked past the great pumpkin in the town square. Only the pumpkin was bricked over, hidden behind a layer of cinderblocks. 

Marnie wouldn’t like that, he reflected. She loved their pumpkin. He thought of his friend from time to time, most usually when he walked past the pumpkin that he’d come to associate with her. But it didn’t occur to him that she could do something about this, as it was in fact Halloween and she could cross through the portal. It didn’t, in fact, occur to him that something needed to be done at all. The orange patches on his coat were really pretty garish, if it came down to it. Gray was a much more sensible color. 

He tucked his hands into his pockets, sauntering aimlessly through the square. There had been somewhere he was going. He ran through a dozen possible destinations, but none of them felt really right. The unsettled feeling- shouldn’t there be a cluttered storefront here? Hadn’t the leaves been a bright yellow that morning?- intensified, but the flowing fog ate up another section of color on his tennis shoes and blunted his pointed nose down to the ordinary snub of a human. 

And besides, it was nice to just walk. Halloweentown was never so busy as it was on the one day they waited for all year round, but today it was deserted, just him and a few other people going about their business. They were all in gray too. The sky above was misty and low, making the town seem even more unnaturally still and quiet. Was it unnatural? Hadn’t it always been this way? Luke couldn’t really remember anything else, and so he shrugged. He was an easy going guy. 

It was then that he’d bumped shoulders with two witches. He could tell immediately that it was Marnie and her grandma, but only noticed it with the same disengaged curiosity that he noticed the orderly stack of newspapers in the bin in front of the store where there was ordinarily a riotous display of books and toys. The rich color of their clothes looked oversaturated and strange to him, against the pleasant monotonous background of gray. He’d gone along with no protest as they drug him into whatever it was that they were so worked up about. 

As Marnie and her grandma had searched and bickered and spoken to each other, he hadn’t really been listening or paying close attention. They were looking for a book, which he had an unclear sense was because they didn’t want to be turned gray themselves. Then, with a forceful snap, he’d been back. He’d never been so pleased to be wearing his own face, his own vivid clothes. It felt as though he’d woken up from sleepwalking, unable to recall how he’d come to be standing in Aggie Cromwell’s living room, with only the blurred recollection of settling back into his old human facade with discomfiting ease. 

As they’d worked together, he’d been impressed anew by Marnie’s determination in the face of stacked odds. Even throughout getting threatened by cavemen and sorting through Gort’s absurd piles of trash, she kept trying. Luke admired her perseverance, though he had to admit he had been awestruck and a little frightened when the Cromwells had ripped open the portal after it closed itself at midnight the way it had done every year for centuries, a display of raw power that he knew he was not likely to see again in his lifetime. After bidding them all farewell, he was only too grateful to return to his home, planning to do nothing but sleep for the next day. What with time traveling and flying on a broomstick and thinking that the color gray was cool, Luke was ready for quite a bit of time with no excitement.


	16. Carved

When Grandma Aggie had returned home with a carful of pumpkins, all of her grandchildren had been thrilled. Gwen, who was studying for her real estate license exam, was all too pleased to hand them some knives, newspaper, and a few buckets, and send them all out to the back porch to get to work. 

Dylan had begun working slowly and methodically on his selected gourd, carving an entry hole in the bottom for easier placement of the candle and scraping out the seeds and pulp by hand. Marnie, of course, immediately tried her hand at removal by magic and succeeded in turning the pumpkin completely inside out. Sophie had happily taken up a lapful of the smallest pumpkins, and as she narrowed her eyes in focus, neat octagons appeared around their stems which she easily pulled out and with childish glee grabbed handfuls of the stringy viscera. 

Each of the children started by carving faces, Dylan’s a classic square toothed smile, Marnie’s with wild eyes and jagged fangs, and Sophie’s essentially being a smiley face. With their grandma’s help they moved on to more elaborate aims like lanterns and lacy, delicate cobwebs. The tools she pulled from her carpet bag never broke or slipped, and she had a seemingly endless supply of templates to copy from. While the odd errant handful of pulp got flung, they all mostly got along as the amber afternoon slipped quickly towards twilight.

As each one of the siblings finished a pumpkin, they’d present it to their grandma, who would exclaim and compliment it before walking around to the front porch to arrange it with the others. Eventually they worked together to create a haunted house landscape using pumpkins. Marnie and Aggie worked on the house itself, a tall and appropriately rickety looking house encompassing the whole of the largest pumpkin, including details of witches and monsters in the windows in silhouette. Dylan worked on realistic surrounding details like bushes and trees, and Sophie worked again on the smallest pumpkins, adding touches like cats and bats and even a jack-o-lantern to surround the other components. 

The family arranged their scenery on the front steps, tucking a lighted candle into each hollow gourd and then standing back to admire the cheerful display glowing amid the dusk. Of course when Gwen came out she was a little shocked at the profusion of pumpkins, but congratulated each of her children on their creative endeavors and agreed to make space in her kitchen for drying, salting, and roasting the seeds. 

No one else in the neighborhood quite knew how the pumpkins seemed to light up as the sun set each night, and how they stayed so fresh as the weeks of October whiled on. The general thought was that they must be very realistic fakes, wired for electricity and set on timers. They were all very complimentary of the display, and told the Pipers so whenever they ran into each other at the park at the end of the street or on walks around the suburb. There were one or two other houses on the block that were decorated with skeletons and fake hanging ghosts, but somehow each year it was the Piper’s house that drew the eye and heralded the coming of Halloween, and the elaborately carved pumpkin display was no different.


End file.
